The Ratched-McMurphy Model Revisited: A Critique of Participatory Development Models, Strategies, and Projects

Abstract

In recent years, development theorists, planners, and practitioners have placed much greater stress on the crucial importance of popular participation in promoting rural development. Twenty years ago it was fashionable to talk about national planning; today it is fashionable to talk about participatory development. As in the past, the wealthy, the well-educated, and the professionals define the contents of participatory development and how it should be applied to and by the rural masses. Socialist theorists attack the bourgeois state and pontificate on the transition to socialism; the capitalists denounce state intervention and invoke the magic of the market; the peasants look toward the sky and pray for rain; and the cows amble in search of grass unaware of their crucial role in the participatory development process.